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Sunday, October 7, 2007

Casca Grossa 2007 - Post Game Wrapup

So after finally making it back home from Texas at 8:15 pm friday night I tried to get ready for Casca Grossa. I packed my stuff up, got my directions, had some subway and then tried to get some sleep. We got up at 9am, expecting a 2 hour drive to get to an event that was supposed to start at 1 in the afternoon. After a couple of wrong turns we roll up to Mt. Zion high school at 12:30 and I rush to go get registered, then frantically change clothes. I head down to the mats to weigh in, hoping my division hasn't started yet and run into Ralph, another guy from Hardcore gym, who tells me that it's going to be at least a couple of hours before our divisions start. Well, at least I'm on time. We hang out, watch the advanced guys and the absolute division, then we find out that our divisions probably won't start until around 6pm. So all of that hurry was for nothing. Fast forward to about 6:15 and Ralph's division, the No-Gi Lightweight Novices, starts up. He is the FIRST match. He ends up losing in overtime to a standing Guillotine, but he did a great job of defending a triangle choke. So now to my match, I'm the third match in our division and my oppnent is Josh Cochan (Pretty sure that's spelled right). I didn't catch what gym he was from but he was pretty big for a fly-weight and VERY strong. He came on very intense and it took me a couple of minutes to get settled in and comfortable. My memory of the match has almost no relation to what the video shows, so instead of my totally incorrect play by play, check the video of my match, it's up here: Kintanon at Casca GrossaRalph's video is up here: Ralp at Casca GrossaHis video isn't as high quality as mine is, sorry Ralph. My second match was against a guy with really good hip movement. I got the takedown, but he fought off my americana attempts and was able to finally catch me with an armbar. He got me pretty good and my elbow is hyperextended. And something I did in the first match tweaked my shoulder on that same side. But I have a month to recover for NAGA... So I think I'll be ok.

I hate skin on skin contact. I occasionally will grapple in shorts, but it drives me insane.Everything else is just a side effect. Sometimes the grip is nice, sometimes people are grabbing my pants, but mostly it just keeps me from having that much skin on skin contact.